


permanence is hard (when you’re losing it right from the start)

by closingdoors



Series: Pepperony Week 2019 [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Pepperony Week, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 16:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20138599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: The twentieth anniversary of the Endgame battle arrives. Morgan and Pepper grieve in their own ways.Prompt: Morgan Stark.





	permanence is hard (when you’re losing it right from the start)

A dull view  
A world that’s growing old on you  
But permanence is hard  
When you’re losing it right from the start. 

**Golden Age, Speakrs **

* * *

Peter had once told her that there had been a mural on every wall in the first two years after her dad's death.

After the battle, her mom had moved them away from their cozy house in the woods to be nearer to her family. She'd switched Morgan's home schooling for actual school. To be honest, Morgan doesn't really remember much of that early life at all. The memories are hazy. She's not quite sure when the other students at her school had become aware of who she was, made the connection between her last name and his, but soon enough she'd become infamous for it; even the teachers had treated her differently. She'd asked her mom if she could change her surname from Stark to Potts right before she'd joined high school - if her mom had been upset by this request, she hadn't shown it.

She hadn't believed Peter about the murals. After all, the world had moved on, new heroes had been born to save the day.

Then the tenth anniversary had rolled around and there he'd been - Iron Man every flat surface. All that red and gold. The machine that'd been her father. 

Her mom had dragged her along to a memorial. A few people had shot her looks, like they were trying to place her face, but Pepper hadn't spared a glance at any of them. Morgan had watched her mom stare right up at the mural of Iron Man, candle in hand, tears steadily falling down her cheeks.

In the car, on the way home, her mom had turned down the radio and said: "He was a better man than the pictures show." 

And _god, _were there pictures. Everywhere she turned there were tributes and expectant eyes, people waiting for her to mourn. There were clips of all his battles and his suits and even that stupid message he'd left behind, with the words _love you three thousand._

There were so many people, too, who'd crossed paths with him; people, like her mom, who wanted to tell her about the man her father was. Some had been close to him, like Rhodey; Happy; Peter. Some were total strangers, like an old man who'd once stopped her in the street, and most were the press who hounded her and her mom for a comment every time the anniversary rolled around. They had all known him and they'd speak _at _her, like she was supposed to be remembering these words, like she was supposed to be grateful that they were sharing.

But she hadn't been. She'd been angry that all of these people had known the man made of iron and she _hadn't._

So Morgan had rolled her eyes and looked away from her mom, and said: "I don't care." 

It'd been the last time her mom had mentioned her father.

Morgan shakes the thought away and dips her paintbrush in brown.

Truthfully, she isn't angry anymore. She's learned to make her peace with it, with the man whose photos still line her mom's mantelpiece, whose face smiles at her in a hologram.

She wipes at the sweat on her brow and begins to paint.

It's soothing, the rhythm of the brush, the sound it makes against the canvas. It'd taken her a long time to admit that this is what she'd enjoyed most - so many of her teachers at school had waited for her to have a love for science, for engineering. While her grades had always been high, she hadn't had a passion for the subject. There had been no appeal in it. 

But this, now - watching colours swirl and come together at her hand? This is what she _loves. _She'd been so afraid to admit it. Daunted by Stark Industries, the legacy of her grandfather and her father combined, still run by her mother. 

On her sixteenth birthday, her mom had presented her with a set of high-quality watercolour paints with a proud smile. And that had been that.

Sometimes, she wonders how different she would be if he were still here. Would he have instilled a love for engineering in her? Would she be flying in a suit of iron right now, instead of painting in her childhood bedroom? Would her mom roll her eyes every time they clambered to the dinner table elbow-deep in motor oil instead of charcoal?

She washes the brush out and dips it in red.

For a long time, she'd shut out the members of her family who'd wanted to tell her everything about her dad. She'd made friends at school with a few other students who'd lost parents. Most of them had memories, though, and they'd struggled to empathise with her grieving someone she doesn't remember; someone in the public eye. So she'd moved on to befriending friends of single parents, but then their parents had just moved on and remarried, filling in the gap. Her mom had never, not to her knowledge, even tried dating again.

Morgan lifts her hand and wipes away a tear that's escaped.

She doesn't want to shut people out anymore. She doesn't want to turn away from her reflection just because she sees him. And she wants her mom to talk about him. She does. She really does.

It's late afternoon by the time she's finished. Her mom is sitting on the couch, watching a tribute - people in Australia lighting up the sky with red and gold fireworks.

After all, it's the twentieth anniversary.

"Mom?"

Her mom turns with a patient smile, holding a faded t-shirt of her dad's in her hands. There are no tears anymore. Morgan's never really sure if that's a good thing or not. 

She guesses her dad had spent so much of his life in the public eye that her mom had, eventually, gotten used to it, no matter whether it was news of his antics or of his death.

"What've you got there?" Pepper asks, indicating to the canvas in her hands.

Morgan takes a deep breath. "Well, I... I thought I'd make a tribute of my own."

She turns it to face her mom. 

It isn't Iron Man; it's Tony Stark. He's wearing the t-shirt Pepper's holding now. There's an easy smile on his face at something, his hair thick and dark, the way it had been in the pre-marriage memories her mom had once described. He's holding the original arc reactor in one hand, the other placed over his RT-free chest. If you follow his gaze, there's the faintest hint of red hair.

"Morgan," Pepper breathes, slowly rising and approaching. One of her hands reaches out, trembling, only the tip of her index finger pressing against his smile. "You did this?"

"Do you like it?" 

"Yes. Yes, I like it. It's beautiful."

Pepper takes the canvas, breathing shaky, and approaches the fireplace. She takes down the Barnett Newman and replaces it with the canvas.

"Mom..." Morgan barely gets out, throat clogging.

Pepper turns and wraps her up tightly in her arms. Morgan buries her face in her shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut when her eyes sting with tears.

"Do you think, if he were still here - " Pepper tries to pull away, but Morgan clings to her; she knows she wouldn't be able to get the words out if her mom looks at her now. "Do you think he'd like me?"

Pepper cradles the back of her head and presses a kiss to her temple. 

"Of course he would. He loved you so much," Pepper murmurs.

When Morgan finally has the courage to pull away, her mom is crying too, just enough to smudge her mascara a little. She gives her a smile and runs a hand through Morgan's long dark hair. 

"You wanna watch the tributes with me?" Pepper asks softly. "There's murals everywhere."

"Yeah. Okay." 

She's right. There are murals everywhere. Australia; Europe; Asia - there's even a space station projecting a hologram image of Iron Man looking over the world he'd saved. Morgan rests her cheek on her mom's shoulder as they watch, but she finds her eyes drift over to the canvas she'd painted. 

Sometimes, that familiar teenage anger does come back to her. She's angry at him for sacrificing himself, then she's angry at herself for believing their family unit takes precedent over billions of lives. Mostly, she's just sad. That she never got to know him. All of the memories she has of him come from other people; none of them are hers.

Except for those five words: _I love you three thousand._

"You said them to him first," her mom had explained one day, back before she'd stopped speaking about her dad, "the words were yours." 

Morgan's eyes drift close as she finds herself being lulled to sleep. The last thing she sees is the smile of her father, young and carefree, a man who'd wanted to live. Not a machine. Not a suit of iron.

_I love you too, _she thinks, and sleeps.


End file.
